ve the interests of Conde like as his sister
intended. Thus the principal and the dominant motive of Madame de
Longueville's conduct was just the opposite of that which La
Rochefoucauld imputed to her. Let us add further that she had always had
a rivalry of beauty with Madame de Chatillon, and that her vanity was
not sorry to humiliate a rival whom she did not tolerate by depriving
her for a few days of a lover of whose attachment the latter fancied
herself perfectly secure. Love and the senses had nothing to do with it
in this matter. The gratification of the senses, it has already been
remarked, did not ensnare her; she was proof against their surprises.
Previously the Duke de Nemours had addressed his ardent homage to her,
but all the attractions of his handsome person and his lofty bearing had
made no impression upon her, and she only bestowed a thought on the
amiable Duke when she had some interest to forward by reviving such
conquest. And this is not an opinion hazarded at a venture; it is
furnished us by a person thoroughly well informed, and who had no
affection for Madame de Longueville; the testimony therefore is the more
valuable: "M. de Nemours[3] previously had not much pleased her, and
notwithstanding the attachment he appeared to entertain for her, as well
as all the good qualities and grand airs of which he could boast, she
had found nothing charming about him save the pleasure he showed himself
desirous of giving her by abandoning Madame de Chatillon for herself,
and that which she had of depriving a woman whom she did not like of a
friend of so much consequence." Now how far had this _liaison_ of a few
days gone? Bussy is the only contemporary who offers any reply to this
question in the cynical light of his _Histoire amoreuse des Gaules_. But
who would accept that satire literally? It proves only one thing, the
unfortunate notoriety which the imprudence of Madame de Longueville
derived from the Memoirs of La Rochefoucauld published in 1662. Before
those Memoirs saw the light, not a word is anywhere to be found on a
point as obscure as it is delicate. After, Bussy was delighted to repeat
La Rochefoucauld, and Madame de Longueville has thus fallen into the
scandalous chronicle.

[1] "La Rochefoucauld, depuis assez longtemps ayant envie de la
quitter, prit cette occasion avec joie."--Mad. de Nemours, p. 150.

[2] La Rochefoucauld, edition 1662, p. 198.

[3] Mad. de Nemours, pp. 149, 150